Knowing what they’d done to him, knowing what he’d suffered, knowing that his skin crawled with the memory of their hands, knowing all that and more still I wanted to touch him. Needed to. Blood calls to blood, Kemses had said. You’ll know soon enough.
If I asked... he might decline. And was that not his right? Surely to do him that courtesy, of asking permission and respecting his desires, surely that was the least I could do for him. But looking on him I knew he would die if he continued thus. I didn’t know how long they’d kept him, but they were killing him, or coming so close as to drive him to insanity. So I obeyed instinct. I gave in, and felt a rush of relief so intense I almost gasped. I gave in and sat beside him and gathered that frail body in my arms. He did not resist. Perhaps he expected some new assault... but I did nothing else. Merely held him, one hand cupping the side of his face against my throat, the other gingerly resting on his back. Breathed in the dust-dry tomb scent of his skin. Felt the too-slow beat of his heart, as if it were stumbling to a final rest. I held him until my body began to shake, to complain, to ache. Until thought eased from my mind and left me blank. Until I could acknowledge the tears that ran the length of my cheeks, sliding down my chin to dampen his dry hair.
One of his hands uncurled, just enough to catch on my shirt-sleeve. And then, at the last, I felt sleep slacken him in my arms.
When I could no longer hold him I transferred him to the bed, and not all my own pain and body weakness could keep me from doing it gently; I did not count the cost. I stumbled through the chamber, tidying it as best I could, then brought the untouched food with me back to the kitchen.
“Didn’t eat again, did he,” the chef said. “All my work put to waste.”
I said nothing, only handed the basket over.
“It’s well past dinner,” the chef said. “Where were you?”
“Waiting,” I said. And added, “He had guests.”
“Ah,” the chef said with a sigh. “I wish they wouldn’t interrupt his mealtimes. “Get him to eat, Sheval,” they say, and then they consume him with their orgies and their drugs and wonder why he never gains weight.”
“I’ll try to get him to eat,” I said. “When should I be back?”
He sighed again. “Let us try lunch tomorrow, but an hour later.”
I nodded and excused myself to return to my bunk. Once I reached it I slid beneath the blankets and stared at the wall. I had grown up on tales of despotic kings and inbred royalty, cruel and capricious governments where people with absolute power crushed their peasantry and extorted money from their merchant class. I had suckled that distrust with the milk from my mother’s breast. How then did I find myself weeping slow tears for a king? And not just any king, but the king of a race of slavers and thugs?
I wanted to free him from Suleris, but not to deliver him to Sedetnet. He was my key to a life without pain, but I was having trouble imagining him deserving the kind of callous self-interested purpose I had intended him for.
It was precipitous, all of this. Perhaps he was just as bad as all the rest. Surely he could be no other way, not in a culture this depraved. Kemses was an exception, the genets had reported him so.
And I, I was chasing my thoughts in circles, shaking with confusion and unhappiness.
As I fell asleep, the last thought in my mind was that I hadn’t wiped him clean.
My nightmare life at blood-flag Suleris commenced then, a pastiche of nauseating sensory impressions. The aroma of artisan cuisine married to the stale stench of old sex and dried blood; crumpled satin sheets, stained and wet, and the rough blankets I huddled under at night; the whines and sighs of the genets, soughing like a mournful breeze, and the throaty laughs and cruel mockery of the elves who visited their torments daily on the body and heart of their own king. And I passed through these horrors as a witness, unable to right any of the wrongs I lived with, and perhaps that corrosion was responsible for my outburst when Sondrea found me next.
“They’re killing him,” I said. “You might as well stop cooking for him and hasten the process.”
“You can’t kill an elf.”
“I’ve seen elves die,” I said. “With enough determination you can destroy one. And certainly if you don’t feel up to murder, you can always drive them mad. Is that what they want? A madman?”
“It would make it easier on them, I suspect,” she said. “They could do whatever magic it is they do without having to deal with him at all.”
I covered my eyes with a hand.
“That’s neither here nor there,” she said. “What matters is that we’ve had orders to stop cleaning up the chamber. You’re the one who’s been doing that, yes?”
I looked up at her over the tops of my fingers. “Yes.”
“Stop.”
“They can’t honestly expect him to live in the kind of filth that will accumulate if we don’t tidy that chamber!”
“I don’t know what they expect,” she said, tired. “All I know is that when the elves give us an order, we obey. So don’t clean up the room.”
Aghast, I said, “Isn’t there anything we can do to make him more comfortable?”
She cocked a brow. “He’s an elf and you want to make him more comfortable?”
“No one deserves what he’s going through,” I said.
She shook her head. “Just leave it, Morgan.”
So I left it. I left it for three days, until I couldn’t bear it anymore. On the fourth night I collected some cleaning supplies in a bucket and slipped out of the dormitory. I filled it at the fountain and then crept across the compound and let myself into the main building. No elf lived here, save the Fount; as far as I’d been able to tell, this building’s sole use was as buffer for that gilded cage, to insulate it from air and life and any hope of escape. Without windows or sconces the hall was so dark I had to feel my way down it with fingertips trailing against the wall. The door was unlocked to all but its captive, some elven magic similar to the locks on the genet cages and equally opaque to me. I turned the knob and almost tripped over the king. He had collapsed beside the door, his skeletal frame cruelly illumined by the light of the single candle nearly drowned on the bed-stand.
The temptation to drag him up and out of the room, away from the compound, was so strong I almost did it... but we wouldn’t get far. I needed more of a plan than ‘grab him bodily and hope to escape.’ I needed supplies. A route. To arrange for something for him to ride; the drake could carry us all, I wagered, but not as fast as we could go if he had his own mount. I’d seen horses on the compound, pack animals and riding beasts both. Surely one of them could be stolen. And as for the king...
I sighed and gathered him up as best I could, half-dragging him back toward the bed. If he was going to make it, I would have to find some way to rouse him from his catatonia. Bad enough that my supply of the poppy was dwindling too quickly. All my plans would triple in complexity if I had to work around his unconsciousness.
He had bloodied his fingers on the door; nor was that the only place he bled, though the rents on his flanks and arms had crusted over. That they hadn’t healed was stark enough proof of how depleted his captors kept him. With a grunt I pushed him back up onto the bed before my own limbs dumped me onto the floor. For several minutes I could only lie there, struggling to catch my wind. Then by the light of the candle I dragged myself to my feet and began cleaning the chamber. The elves had made a ruin of it; they hadn’t even removed the four-day-old food. If the room hadn’t already stunk of fouler things the ordure of rot would have been unbearable. I pushed my sleeves up past my elbows, nose wrinkled, and applied myself to the work. It reminded me of home, where I’d forced myself to do my own housework to prove that I could.
These months spent in the Archipelago had not been kind to me and by the time I’d completed my chores my breath came hard and erratic. I lit a stick of incense and refreshed the candle by tipping the pooled wax out from around the wick, and then I slumped against the side of the b
ed, trembling with exhaustion. I waited for the actinic sparks that traveled my limbs to culminate in a seizure... but they didn’t. They never seemed to, lately, and I was too exhausted to do more than be grateful; how far I’d come from the inquisitive scholar and his ceaseless pursuit of knowledge!
Somehow I regained my feet and that was well, for I had one final chore. I wrung a rag in the remaining clear water, ignoring the white ache in my wrists, and gently, so gently, touched it across the king’s shoulder. When he didn’t flinch I set myself to bathing him in earnest. It began as a practical act: four days of that treatment had left him filthy. But as I worked it became obsessive. I had to wipe his attackers off his body. I had to pass over every pore, to scrape their contempt off of him. When I had done I flung the rag away, disgusted by it, and gathered him into my lap. So brittle. They had left him almost nothing. I pressed my face against his hair and wished I knew how to will the magic into him.
His hand closed on my arm and I started, for I had thought him unconscious. He did not lift his face, but his fingers flexed, each a discrete motion, as if he was remembering how to use them. They were short to match his narrow palms; for a man he had small hands, a fact disguised by how fleshless they were. I didn’t realize I was biting my lower lip until his fingers stopped moving and he sighed, barely disturbing the thin shirt near my throat. I waited to see if he would speak or move further... but he had exhausted his strength. Mine was not far from its own end. I tucked the blanket around him, hiding his nakedness, and secreted my cleaning supplies beneath the bed. Then I let myself out and returned to my room, there to await the inevitability of the morning’s discipline.
Sondrea was on me before the sun. “What exactly were you hoping to accomplish? It was you, wasn’t it?”
I sat up on one elbow, ignoring the pain gnawing the joint. The Fount’s room had seemed smaller when I’d been cleaning it than it felt now in the memory of my muscles. “They use him for magic,” I said. “For fuel.”
“I suppose,” she said. “I don’t pretend to understand such things.”
“If they let me take care of him, he’ll be more useful to them for their magical purposes.”
She eyed me askance.
“Please, Sondrea,” I said. “Put it to them as an investment. Do they want to torture him? Or do they want to use him for what they took him for?”
“Neither you nor I know exactly what they want to use him for,” she said. “Perhaps they’ve had enough of genet-making. Perhaps it amuses them to kill him slowly.”
“If you won’t put it before them, let me.”
“And let them stare a little overlong at your face?” When I touched my fingers to my jaw she said, “Oh, don’t think I hadn’t noticed. If elves could lie fruitfully with humans I would wonder if you were a by-blow. As it is, I think if they noticed just how similar you are they’d drag you into the games with him. They’re perverse that way. And I would lose yet another worker!”
“You seem to have enough,” I said.
“Not enough willing to have anything to do with the Fount.” She sighed. “I don’t like the disorder they sow there. It’s unhealthful. I have nightmares about disease breeding in the corners of that suite. I’ll talk with them, but don’t do anything more until I come back. In fact, take the day. Rest. Go for a walk. Get away from here for a while.” I began to protest but she shook her head. “No. I mean it. Leave me to the work. I’ll get an answer by supper.”
I did not want to leave him to their depredations for another day... but there was something I wanted to do and she had given me pretext for it. I acquiesced.
So it was that sometime later I stopped before the cage with the sleek black genets and waited for one of them to turn a pointed face toward me and rotate an ear in my direction.
“If an elf wanted to attract a genet,” I said. “What would he do?”
The two nearest genets glanced at one another. Then the first said, “Is that what you are wanting to do then?”
“I am human, if you hadn’t noticed,” I said, ignoring the frisson of alarm that comment solicited.
“You’re no more human than we are,” the genet said. “But if you want to pretend, that’s your affair.”
“Genet attracting,” I reminded her.
She shrugged, a hitch of one narrow shoulder. “Cut yourself. Spread your blood and seed to the wind. If we can smell it through your skin, putting it in the air will draw everyone to you.”
Of course. What else? “Thank you,” I said, setting my fingers on the wire. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Black Pearl Seven,” she said.
“Black Pearl Seven,” I repeated. “Then these others...”
“I’m Nine,” the one beside her said from her cage.
“All of you are sisters, then,” I said.
“Born of the Fount and the Black Pearl dam,” Seven said.
“And the dam?” I asked.
“Here,” said a voice from the topmost cage. It was a gray day, diffuse and cloudy and moist; even so I had to shade my eyes to squint up at her. She looked identical to her progeny.
“May I... is it indelicate if I ask... how it went with the sire?” I asked.
She tilted her ears forward. “Master? The elves came and put the blood and magic in me, and I bore my litter from that union.”
“Did you even see the Fount?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Only the trainers.”
Blood... and magic. Were all these creatures constructs born of the king’s magic? I suppressed a shudder.
“It is the way of things,” the dam said as if sensing my unease.
“Are there no male genets at all?” I asked.
They consulted one another in silence, passing one another significant looks, question and answer. Then Nine shook her head. “No. We have never seen one.”
“Perhaps females are more biddable,” the dam said.
“Or more easily trained?”
“More pleasant to look at,” a fourth Black Pearl opined. “I heard a trainer say once that males would have ungainly silhouettes with their genitalia exposed.”
“You are a peculiar one,” Seven said. “We have seen you walking to and from the Fount’s hall. You talked with the Peppercorns and the Almonds.”
“I did,” I said. “Sondrea asked me to refrain for fear of agitating you further.”
“I think it would be pleasant to talk to someone,” Nine said.
“So do I,” Seven said. “Maybe you could come by more often?”
“If I can,” I said. How could I not? “But I have been commanded to recreation for the day, off the compound. I must excuse myself for the nonce.”
“He won’t come back,” a fifth unexpectedly said.
“He will,” Seven said, looking at me. “Won’t you?”
“I promise,” I said.
Beneath the cloud-softened sky I toiled up the nearest slope, leaving the manor behind. As the distance grew, the effects of the magical pollution of the compound faded; even the stiffness in my gait subsided just enough to make walking less of a punishment. I found a tree of the type I had pointed out to Kelu and Almond and lowered myself to the ground beside it, resting my back on its trunk and drawing in a long, slow breath. What a relief to be free of the place! And how gentle the air seemed, to caress me with such soft, damp breezes. I could almost sense the sea’s faraway presence in it.
Ah, but I had not come for pleasure. I ran my fingers along the edge of my arm. As a servant I had been issued nothing more dangerous than my livery, several pairs of sandals and my own linens. It was the edge of the pendant, kept hidden all these weeks beneath the thickest mass of my hair near the back of my neck, that I used to open the side of my arm near my hand.
With the blood oozing thin rivulets into my palm, I composed myself to wait.
When I woke it was to the rough, dry tongue of the drake scraping at the side of my neck. I turned enough to loop my arms around its head and l
aughed as it huffed its scorched-breeze breath across my shoulder. Peering over its back were my genets.
“Look at you,” Kelu said, licking her nose. “All dressed up in the garb of the enemy.”
“That was the idea,” I said. “How scruffy the two of you look!”
Mournful, Almond said, “No brushes.”
“You have burrs in your coat,” I said and couldn’t help laughing a little. “Come now, come down here and drink.”
“Really?” Almond asked, brightening.
“No use wasting it,” I said. Kelu was already sliding off the back of the drake and soon I had them both in my arms and it hurt, God how it hurt but to hear their soft supplicating sounds, to sense their ecstasies... they had such short lives to be so joyless.
After the dizziness had passed and they had become quiescent in my lap, I said, “How have you been then, in the wild?”
“Not as bad as I thought,” Kelu said. How warm they were, how soft, like blankets that breathed. They swaddled me in their furry contentment. “The drake hunts for us, or we find fish, and it often spots roving elves far in advance of either of us.” She reached out and patted the drake’s nose. “It’s been a great help.”
“And your feeding?” I asked.
“Yes, well,” Kelu said, nibbling a clawtip, “I have had a little fun elf-hunting for that.”
“It is very dangerous, Master,” Almond said, ears flipping down. “I worry.”
“I haven’t gotten caught,” Kelu said. “They’re careless. They think nothing can hurt them so they often wander alone at night.”
“They have magic,” I said. “You should be cautious.”
“I am,” she said blithely. Almond looked unconvinced, but what could I say?
“What of you, Master?” Almond asked.
“Ah,” I said. “I have found the king. It’s time to begin planning for his abduction.”
An Heir to Thorns and Steel Page 27